Europe is hard on secessions

Dr. Roslyn Fuller is a lecturer in International Law based in Ireland. She is the author of Ireland’s leading textbook on International Law ‘Biehler on International Law: An Irish Perspective’ (Round Hall, 2013). In addition to her academic work, she has also writes for the Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Journal on topics of law, politics and education.
Roslyn has been researching democracy for over a decade and is the author of “Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Way” (October 2015, Zed Books). She tweets at @roslynfuller and can be reached at fullerr@tcd.ie.

General view of the plenary room of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Reuters / Vincent Kessler) / Reuters

Faced with their own long-standing independence movements, Europeans are a tough crowd when it comes to all things related to secession.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) passed
a harshly-worded resolution condemning Russia’s handling of the
situation in Crimea and stripping Russian delegates of their
voting rights for the remainder of the year.

One of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious institutions, the
Council of Europe is not part of the European Union, although the
two bodies have a widely-overlapping membership. Its
Parliamentary Assembly is composed of Members of Parliament
(delegates) from all member States, as well as observers from
Canada, Israel and Mexico.

Less than 24 hours before the PACE Resolution was passed, Spain’s
Congress of Deputies rejected the possibility of a Catalonian
independence referendum, despite the fact that 80 percent of
Catalonians reportedly desire one, while an online referendum
which delivered an overwhelming vote in favor of independence for
Veneto, Italy last month, has sunk without a trace from the
Italian political agenda.

Similarly, European politicians have tried to warn Scots off
voting for independence from Britain in a referendum scheduled
for September. They claim that it would be extremely difficult
for an independent Scotland to join the European Union, given the
attitudes of some of its member states to any secession, even one
conducted in accordance with mutually-agreed referendum
procedures.

In this hostile atmosphere, any expression in favor of
independence or secession tends to go over like a lead balloon.

However, while the general tenor of any European political body
in regards to questions of independence was entirely foreseeable,
the resolution and its accompanying report do not represent the
Council’s finest moment and they fall short of the standards of
professionalism that one would normally expect from such an
organization.

Double standards

Russia has repeatedly expressed concerns about extreme right-wing
elements represented in the current Ukrainian government. These
claims center around three persons in specific: Andrey Parubiy,
the current Secretary of Ukraine’s Security Committee and
co-founder of Svoboda (which was, at the time, the National
Socialist Party of Ukraine, complete with the accompanying Nazi
symbolism); Dmitry Yarosh, Prubiy’s deputy and leader of the
Right Sector; and Aleksandr Sych, deputy prime minister and a
Svoboda member.

Svoboda members also reportedly invest the posts of
prosecutor-general, agriculture minister and environment
minister. PACE has dismissed the presence of these officials out
of hand, accusing Russia of fabricating propaganda about their
right-wing sympathies to suit its own agenda.

The organization’s refusal to even engage with this point is hard
to understand, especially since the same representatives are
usually very concerned over any rise in extreme-right politics in
their own countries.

When Austria’s Freedom Party entered a coalition government in
1999, most other European countries scaled backed their
cooperation with Austria and refused to support Austrian
candidates seeking positions at international institutions. In a
similar vein, Hungary’s right-wing government has been under
close scrutiny from other European nations for years.

At the very least, the Assembly’s refusal to conduct its own
investigations shows a cavalier lack of concern on this point,
which is as uncharacteristic as it is distressing.

The resolution’s accompanying report also said that claims of
rights violations perpetrated against ethnic Russians living in
the Ukraine were baseless. According to the report, Russia had
manufactured these claims by extrapolating generalizations about
violations from a few isolated incidents. This point of view
would have been more understandable, if the Assembly had not
unquestioningly accepted reports of similar violations against
Crimean Ukrainians and Tatars in a resolution it had passed on
the Ukraine only the day before.

Self-determination v territorial integrity

Of course, the body of the resolution dealt with the legality of
the Crimean independence referendum.

The Western point of view has historically been that secession is
always illegal, unless the parent state has agreed to an
independence referendum. That this strategy has spawned a
collection of armed pro-independence groups in those European
countries that refuse to grant such a process is generally
ignored. Under great duress, Western countries (which have
traditionally called the shots when it comes to making
international law) have made one exception to this rule, and that
is that they are willing to consider independence if mass
atrocities have been committed, provided those atrocities reach a
level where reconciliation would not be possible.

This was the line taken in Kosovo, and also earlier in
Bangladesh, which until 1971 was part of Pakistan. While this
doctrine genuinely developed from the desire to make a minor
concession to the possibility of secession, it has not produced
the most coherent of policies.

Under this understanding, Crimea could have seceded after holding
a referendum if only some serious human rights atrocities had
occurred first. Obviously, there is a flaw in this logic, which
tends to reduce a decision on principle to a contest over who can
claim the most human rights violations. Under this scenario, what
started out as a peaceful process can often degenerate into
violence.

Russia, on the other hand, has historically been more open to the
principle of self-determination, which saw its heyday in Soviet
support for African decolonization in the 1960s.

Under this understanding, if a group of people decides to secede
from a country and hold a referendum to that end, they should
generally be allowed to do so as an expression of their right to
self-determination. This is all the more so when the referendum
resolves a situation of tension without bloodshed. This is not to
say that Russia, or its predecessor, the Soviet Union, favor
independence in all circumstances; merely that they entertain a
more permissive and flexible attitude towards secession than can
be found in most Western states, and one that gives greater
weight to the principle of self-determination.

No exceptions

These deep differences exist, but yesterday’s PACE resolution
shows, in no uncertain terms, that most Council of Europe members
are not interested in a rapprochement with Russia on this point.

In fact, the resolution demands that Russia hand Crimea back to
Ukraine or face having its delegates’ credentials revoked. Since
absolutely no one believes that Russia will comply with this
demand, or even that it would be a particularly good idea to do
so, this could be a way of preparing Russia’s eventual exit from
the Council should relations continue to deteriorate.

Right now, however, PACE’s point is mainly to punish Russian
parliamentarians. The resolution and accompanying report make
this explicit. Both documents condemn the constitutional
amendments which allowed Crimea to join Russia, as well as the
ratification of what PACE termed an “illegal treaty” on
unification.

The report explicitly accuses Russia of orchestrating the events
leading to the referendum in the Crimea (although with very
little in the way of detail to substantiate this), while the
resolution describes Crimea as being under the “illegal
control” of Russia. It is an uncompromising stance, and the
Council’s claim, made at the end of the resolution, that it would
like to maintain a dialogue with Russia seems out of place after
these unusually harsh words.

The way forward

In spite of all of this, it is important not to lose sight of the
fact that PACE exercises very little real power. PACE itself
described its resolution as merely “sending a signal.”
Duty done, and having made clear exactly what they think of
secession, its members might well eventually decide to brush
everything under the rug, especially if the situation in eastern
Ukraine stabilizes quickly. After all, we’ve all been here before
during the Chechnya years, which saw similar developments within
the Council.

European governments – who must always keep one eye on
re-election – are likely to be somewhat more muted in their
criticism than a selection of their parliamentarians, and Russia
has already weathered the initial international reaction at the
United Nations (although this could heat up again at the plenary
session in September).

NASA has already apparently done its worst in suspending certain
forms of cooperation with Russia (while leaving transport to and
from the International Space Station untouched), and NATO
General-Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen took it upon himself to
threaten Russia with further sanctions should it invade eastern
Ukraine. That Russia has not expressed any intentions of
undertaking military action in eastern Ukraine did not seem to
deter Mr. Rasmussen from preemptively delivering this - all
things considered - astonishingly mild threat.

Oddly enough, despite this acrimonious and high-profile rupture,
some common ground between Russia and the other PACE members has
emerged. Russia has made clear that it favors a federalization of
the Ukraine, which will grant greater autonomy to regions like
Donetsk, where pro-Russian protests continue, and permit them
greater leeway in interpreting their own cultural heritage. This
coincides with a resolution passed by PACE on April 9 which
advocates wide-reaching reforms in the Ukraine. These reforms
include implementing a policy of decentralization, which will
grant greater power to individual regions.

This small slice of common ground could be a way to progress
towards resolving the crisis when the EU, US, Ukraine and Russia
holds talks next week.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.